1. Field of the Invention
Methods and apparatuses consistent with the present invention relate to conversion and distribution of multimedia content, and more particularly, to a centralized content conversion apparatus and method for converting and distributing multimedia content, and a system using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of broadcasting technology and an increase of broadcast content, television (TV) broadcasting has expanded from conventional terrestrial TV broadcasting to satellite TV broadcasting, digital cable TV broadcasting and Internet Protocol (IP) TV broadcasting. Accompanying this trend, most content providing services have become paid services. In order to prevent paid content from being viewed by non-subscribers for a paid service, i.e. unauthorized users, content providing service providers transmit content to subscribers after encrypting the content. Thus, the subscribers must have a set-top box separate from a TV set in order to decrypt the encrypted content. Related art set-top boxes decrypt and decode received encrypted content and only provide the content to a TV set which is directly connected to the set-top box. That is, content bypassed to another TV set is still encrypted. Thus, if a family possesses several TV sets, the family should have set-top boxes corresponding to the number of TV sets in order to view encrypted content on all of the TV sets. That is, if a viewer wants to view content using a TV set located in a living room and continue viewing the content using a TV set located in a sleeping room after moving to the sleeping room, the viewer must move the TV set located in the living room to the sleeping room or install one more set-top box for the TV set located in the sleeping room.